Special Needs Books - Page 2

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Vintage International) (Vintage International)

Jean-Dominique Bauby

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 69 new & used starting at $5.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 154 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left eye--with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his "locked in" situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination under himself and lived his last days--he died two days after the French publication of this slim volume--spiritually unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything's ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window "the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde."

Freaks, Geeks & Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence

Luke Jackson

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Jessica Kingsley Pub Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $8.41

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Have you ever been called a freak or a geek? Have you ever felt like one? Luke Jackson is 13 years old and has Asperger Syndrome. Over the years Luke has learned to laugh at such names but there are other aspects of life which are more difficult. Adolescence and the teenage years are a minefield of emotions, transitions and decisions and when a child has Asperger Syndrome, the result is often explosive.
Luke has three sisters and one brother in various stages of their adolescent and teenage years but he is acutely aware of just how different he is and how little information is available for adolescents like himself.
Drawing from his own experiences and gaining information from his teenage brother and sisters, he wrote this enlightening, honest and witty book in an attempt to address difficult topics such as bullying, friendships, when and how to tell others about AS, school problems, dating, relationships and morality.
Luke writes briefly about his younger autistic and AD/HD brothers, providing amusing insights into the antics of his younger years and advice for parents, carers and teachers of younger AS children. However, his main reason for writing was because "so many books are written about us, but none are written directly to adolescents with Asperger Syndrome. I thought I would write one in the hope that we could all learn together."

Madness: A Bipolar Life

Marya Hornbacher

Amazon Price: $14.55 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $13.47

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An astonishing dispatch from inside the belly of bipolar disorder, reflecting major new insights

When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder.

In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage -- where bipolar always beckons -- is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.

Madness delivers the revelation that Hornbacher is not alone: millions of people in America today are struggling with a variety of disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. And Hornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change, too, the current debate on whether bipolar in children actually exists.

Ten years after Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, this storm of a memoir will revolutionize our understanding of bipolar disorder.

Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

Daniel Tammet

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 92 new & used starting at $3.15

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 129 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Either totally engrossing or terribly tedious... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet is an autobiography that you will either find totally engrossing or terribly tedious. Fortunately, I was one who was enthralled by Tammet and his incredible story.

Tammet is unusual in many ways. First, he was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome (a high level form of Autism), but not until he was 24 years old. He describes in great detail his childhood experiences and how different he was from others. Second, he is a savant with extraordinary abilities in math and languages. In fact, he is so unique that he was featured in a documentary called "Brainman," a take-off on the movie about another savant, "Rainman." And last, what makes him truly incredible is that he is able to express and explain to others how he views his world--something very difficult for people with Autism.

I found Tammet's entire story fascinating--how he sees numbers as colors and shapes, how his loving family supported this difficult but gifted child, his schooling, his journeys to other countries to teach English, the scientific studies that have been done on him and most of all, how he copes as an adult. I found it especially interesting as an educator to see how the Autistic mind works.

How very fortunate we are that Daniel Tammet was able to give us his story in Born on a Blue Day.

Editorial Review:

Born on a Blue Day is a journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today -- guided by the owner himself. Daniel Tammet is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.

He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.

Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it' s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human -- our minds.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.)

Simon Winchester

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 104 new & used starting at $1.80

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> British -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 410 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary put out a call during the late 19th century pleading for "men of letters" to provide help with their mammoth undertaking, hundreds of responses came forth. Some helpers, like Dr. W.C. Minor, provided literally thousands of entries to the editors. But Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was actually a certified lunatic who turned in his dictionary entries from the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Simon Winchester has produced a mesmerizing coda to the deeply troubled Minor's life, a life that in one sense began with the senseless murder of an innocent British brewery worker that the deluded Minor believed was an assassin sent by one of his numerous "enemies."

Winchester also paints a rich portrait of the OED's leading light, Professor James Murray, who spent more than 40 years of his life on a project he would not see completed in his lifetime. Winchester traces the origins of the drive to create a "Big Dictionary" down through Murray and far back into the past; the result is a fascinating compact history of the English language (albeit admittedly more interesting to linguistics enthusiasts than historians or true crime buffs). That Murray and Minor, whose lives took such wildly disparate turns yet were united in their fierce love of language, were able to view one another as peers and foster a warm friendship is just one of the delicately turned subplots of this compelling book. --Tjames Madison

Drinking: A Love Story

Caroline Knapp

Amazon Price: $10.88 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dial Press Trade Paperback Amazon Marketplace: 115 new & used starting at $1.22

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 153 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

beautifully written - gets better each time I read it 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book. I reread it every once in a while because it's so intelligent and beautifully written. It gets a alot of attention as a memoir of addiction (and it's the best one I've ever read), but it stand on it's own as an exquisite piece of writing and a memoir - time spent with a brilliant and nuanced mind, a sophisticated and sensitive person. I wish wish wish I could spend more.

Wonderful Insights, no rearranging that fact 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

What a fantastic book. Not just about alcoholism but the human struggle to live in our own skin, face our problems, our losses and move forward. Also a moving story about an amazingly honest woman. I'm not an alcoholic, but I use the stuff many times to not deal with things, and this book helped me to see that there is something more noble in steering clear of that kind of behavior and seeking more authentic experience. She's done a wonderful job of letting us in on her struggle, and somehow illuminating our own. I was terribly sad to find out that she had passed away some years ago, but she certainly left behind a great gift of inspiration. Her father's quote is a wonderful gem: "Insight is almost always a rearrangement of fact." Her insights bear this out. I wish I had the guts to buy this book for all my girlfriends.

Editorial Review:

The roots of alcoholism in the life of a brilliant daughter of an upper-class family are explored in this stylistic, literary memoir of drinking by a Massachusetts journalist. Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anexoria and then alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: She found inspiration in Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life and sobered up. Her tale is spiced with the characters she's known along the way.

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 508 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 430 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Chase Von, The Last Panther's Review 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Having PTSD myself from Wars and other things, I thought this was a great movie! I didn't read the book first however and normally I do but from what I gather the movie in this instance was much better than the book...

I have read One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and in many ways this reminded me of that, only in the setting of a female dominated one vice a male one....

Maybe in the future if time permits I will read the book itself to see if the movie which I have already seen and truly thought was great stacks up...

If not...

It was that book which inspired the movie and it's a great movie...

And mental illness isn't just something that people are born with, some times they receive it through traumatic experiences such as tragedies or war or the like...

In my opinion it is something that really needs to be given far more attention than it is receiving and this movie sheds light on it like few have...

Your Chance to Hear The Last Panther Speak

Editorial Review:

When reality got "too dense" for 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, she was hospitalized. It was 1967, and reality was too dense for many people. But few who are labeled mad and locked up for refusing to stick to an agreed-upon reality possess Kaysen's lucidity in sorting out a maelstrom of contrary perceptions. Her observations about hospital life are deftly rendered; often darkly funny. Her clarity about the complex province of brain and mind, of neuro-chemical activity and something more, make this book of brief essays an exquisite challenge to conventional thinking about what is normal and what is deviant.

Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve

Christopher Andersen

Amazon Price: $16.29 List Price: $23.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Amazon Marketplace: 71 new & used starting at $7.40

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Actors & Actresses
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Entertainers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Dana is my life force."

--Christopher Reeve

"A terrible thing happened. I wish it hadn't. But would I change who I married? Never."

--Dana Reeve

He was a hero in every sense of the word--the chiseled-from-granite star of four blockbuster Superman films and the romantic classic Somewhere in Time who, after being paralyzed in a freak horseback riding accident, became a symbol of hope for millions. Dana Reeve was no less heroic, standing steadfastly by her husband's side until his surprisingly sudden and unexpected death at age fifty-two. When Dana, a non-smoker, passed away from lung cancer just seventeen months after Chris's death, she left behind their thirteen-year-old son, Will, to be raised by friends and family. Dana was only forty-four years old.

That fate could have dealt such a cruel hand to this golden couple seemed unfathomable. That they could endure it all with grace, courage, and humor defied belief.

Yet for all the millions of words that have been written about their public causes and private struggles following Chris's accident, little is known about the lives they led as passionate young lovers. Now, in the manner of his poignant-yet-stirring bestsellers Jack and Jackie, Jackie After Jack, An Affair to Remember, The Day Diana Died, After Diana, and The Day John Died, No. l New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen draws on those who knew them best to examine in touching detail the Reeves' unique partnership and the romance, faith, and fortitude that defined it.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often uplifting, always compelling, Somewhere in Heaven is more than just a portrait of a marriage. It is the profoundly human story of two souls whose brief lives made a difference, a bittersweet saga of tragedy, triumph, and loss, and--above all else--a love story for the ages.

Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness

Patty Duke

Amazon Price: $7.99 List Price: $7.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bantam Amazon Marketplace: 68 new & used starting at $0.36

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Actors & Actresses
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In her revealing bestseller Call Me Anna, Patty Duke shared her long-kept secret: the talented, Oscar-winning actress who won our hearts on The Patty Duke Show was suffering from a serious-but-treatable-mental illness called manic depression. For nearly twenty years, until she was correctly diagnosed at age thirty-five, she careened between periods of extreme euphoria and debilitating depression, prone to delusions and panic attacks, temper tantrums, spending sprees, and suicide attempts. Now in A Brilliant Madness Patty Duke joins with medical reporter Gloria Hochman to shed light on this powerful, paradoxical, and destructive illness. From what it's like to live with manic-depressive disorder to the latest findings on its most effective treatments, this compassionate and eloquent book provides profound insight into the challenge of mental illness. And though Patty's story, which ends in a newfound happiness with her cherished family, it offers hope for all those who suffer from mood disorders and for the family, friends, and physicians who love and care for them.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

Marya Hornbacher

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 86 new & used starting at $5.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Medical
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Special Needs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 406 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent read albeit quite triggering for most 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Marya is a fabulous writer! I am looking forward to reading her other book next. That being said, this book is very triggering for most!!!!! In fact, when i brought it with me to an inpatient ED Unit, and upon check-in, it was taken from me as "contraband". It triggered me on several occasions before entering the facility - but I was unable to put it down because it is such a captivating story. So, read with caution - that's all I can say. If you are newly recovered from an ED - or knee deep in its deceptive hold, don't look to this book for help. It won't help you. In fact, it'll probably set you back a few notches. This is probably best read by those whom are sympathetic to our disease, but not actually suffering from it.

Editorial Review:

"I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine).